Saturday, April 09, 2011

Tolerance and Loving One's Neighbor

Alright, tolerance is kind of a social buzzword. Practicing tolerance is important and if you don't practice tolerance of others you are backwards and ignorant. So on and so forth. However, practicing tolerance is easier said than done when it comes to tolerating people with whose social and political views I disagree.

I am not going to lie, I nearly did a little dance this week when I found out Glenn Beck was leaving Fox News. Fox News is bad enough as it is, but having Glenn Beck at the helm of his very own platform (cable news show) for spewing hateful rhetoric and misguided opinions took it to a whole new level.

Where I struggle with tolerance is with people like Glenn Beck or Fred Phelps or Joel Osteen or Sarah Palin.

One of the blogs that I read on a pretty regular basis is the God's Politics blog from the Sojourners site. This morning there was a pretty interesting article called Glenn Beck and Teachable Moments with a link to another article called Love Glenn Beck As You Would Love Yourself. As Christians, we are called not only to love the people around us who are easy to love, but those who make us crazy too. Because we can never understand Grace, we might never understand why these people are deserving of love. But I know there are definitely things about me (and indeed, about all of us) that can be difficult to love, and people do so anyway. So in the meantime, I just try to do the best I can, and give thanks for the radical Grace that means even when I CANNOT stand someone, I can at least attempt to practice tolerance. And know that God loves them too.

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About Me

I'm a Chaplain serving at an inner city trauma center. This blog is a snapshot of my theological musings, the things I find interesting, the things I spend my days doing, and my general snarky commentary.
The views expressed on this blog are solely my own and do not represent my denomination, my employer, hospice, all chaplains, or any congregation with whom I worship, work, or visit.
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